塔瓦雷斯斯特拉坎
Таварес Страчан

Blast Off
Walter McConnell

source: artadoo

Strachan was born in Nassau, the capital city of the Bahamas, in 1979, six years after the country gained independence from British rule. His father was a policeman and his mother was a seamstress. The second eldest of six boys, Strachan was introduced to the arts as a child through his family’s involvement in Junkanoo, a historical annual parade and cultural celebration incorporating live music, dance, and elaborate costumes hand-made by competing groups. These early experiences provided the foundation for Strachan’s understanding of materials, process, collaboration, and community.

Initially a painter, Strachan earned his Associate of Fine Arts degree from the College of the Bahamas in 1999. In 2000, he moved to the US to enroll in the glass department at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he began to pursue more conceptual projects that would foreground the prevalent themes and minimalist aesthetic of his later work. After completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2003,[1] Strachan went on to earn his Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Yale University in 2006. Eager to discover the world beyond the Caribbean and ever aware of his tenuous circumstances as a foreign scholarship-based student, Strachan learned to question the boundaries of what was possible and impossible in matters of life and art. This dichotomy continues to be central to the artist’s practice.